Dammam is the industrial heart of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. Here I visited a large pipe-manufacturing plant that belongs to a family industrial group I have known for years.
The Gulf's family groups think in generations. They build plants, form joint ventures with Asian and international partners and treat safety as a discipline: “Safety is everybody's job” is written on the wall, and it shows on the shop floor.
For Kazakhstan, the interest is not only Gulf capital. It is industrial partnership: joint ventures with technology transfer and a management team, local production of pipe and steel products for energy and mining. This is the kind of project I am open to working on.
